“Stop preaching… it’s good, but it’s only been a week.”
Jainee said this rather exasperatedly while I was dispensing wisdom on not being hooked to social media.
After all, like my last namesake—who was just a little bit more famous—I was doing my own “experiments with truth.”
I had been off the digital social grid.
No Facebook. No group WhatsApp. No Instagram.
Ironically, Jainee had originally encouraged me to join Instagram so I could follow her stories and keep abreast of her day, rather than interrogating her later about what she had been up to.
But my little digital detox had created an unexpected problem.
I had found the time to write three blogs that week.
That was obviously a good thing.
Except I now had nowhere to share them.
When I mentioned this strange quandary to Jainee, she immediately saw her opportunity.
She reminded me of something I have always argued: I write what I like, how I like it, for my own joy. My freedom of expression is not dependent on whether anybody likes it, agrees with it, or even reads it.
So she asked a simple question:
“Then why does the absence of an audience bother you?”
Annoyingly, I didn’t have a good answer.
And that was when my experiment with social media became an experiment with something much more interesting:
What actually drives my expression?
I have always believed that the best things we do are those we do for the sheer love of doing them.
When we act for praise or approval, our pleasure becomes dependent on somebody else.
When we act out of love for the craft, the reward is contained within the act itself.
If you love singing, you should be happy singing alone.
If you love writing, writing itself should be enough.
There is an old story about the Mughal Emperor Akbar and the famous singer Tansen that captures this beautifully.
Akbar was so mesmerised by Tansen’s singing that he wanted to meet his guru. Tansen agreed, on the condition that the emperor disguise himself and listen in secret.
Deep in the woods, Akbar heard the guru sing.
The performance was apparently transcendent—far beyond even Tansen’s extraordinary talent.
Afterwards, Akbar asked how there could be such a profound difference between master and disciple.
Tansen’s answer was simple:
“I sing for the emperor. My guru sings for no one.”
His guru sang because he loved music.
The singing itself was the reward.
And I have always liked that idea.
Except my three unpublished blogs were beginning to complicate it.
If I don’t need an audience, why did I care that I had nowhere to share them?
Jainee’s question went deeper:
“Why write a blog at all? If nobody needs to read it, why not just think the thought?”
That has a simpler answer than it sounds.
Because thinking and expressing aren’t the same thing.
The music inside Tansen’s guru’s head may have been beautiful.
But he didn’t merely think it.
He sang it.
There is something satisfying about taking an internal experience and giving it an external form.
A painter puts colour on a canvas.
A musician turns an imagined sound into melody.
A writer turns a thought into prose.
Expression itself is part of the pleasure.
But that still doesn’t explain the audience.
I can sing alone.
I can paint alone.
I can write alone.
So perhaps the real question isn’t why we express.
It is:
Why do we so often want somebody else to receive what we express?
When I was younger, I used to write poems.
I wasn’t publishing them or looking for hundreds of readers.
Showing them to my tuition teacher was enough.
So perhaps this desire for an audience was always there.
Social media didn’t invent it.
It simply industrialised it—and, more importantly, made it visible.
And visibility changes things.
There is a difference between having an audience and expressing yourself for an audience.
I have felt that difference myself.
Changing a title because the original felt too quiet.
Cutting a paragraph I liked because I worried it was asking too much of the reader.
Reaching for a sharper provocation when a gentler thought was actually what I wanted to say.
None of these things feels significant on its own.
But put together, something subtle happens.
The audience starts sitting inside your head.
It becomes an invisible co-author asking:
“What will they think?”
And the question changes.
From:
“What do I want to express?”
to:
“What should I express so that they will listen?”
That is where freedom begins to slip.
Of course, this needs an important qualification.
I am talking about expression as a hobby—as something we do because we enjoy doing it.
If expression is our profession, the audience is part of the equation. The same applies when expression is deliberately altruistic. If I write something because I genuinely want it to help people, then their needs matter too. The audience is part of the reason for expressing in the first place.
There is nothing wrong with either.
They are simply different motivations.
The question I keep coming back to is narrower:
What should expressions equation be with audience outside of when it is truly geared for an audience?
And I think I finally have an answer.
Expression, in its purest form, should be indifferent to an audience.
Not hostile to one.
Not afraid of one.
Not pretending one doesn’t exist.
Not needing one.
Not pandering to one.
Just plain indifferent to whether one is there.
Because without that indifference, there cannot be complete independence.
The moment I care whether someone will like, agree with, criticise or ignore what I have written, the audience has acquired a seat at the table.
The problem isn’t having an audience.
The problem is becoming a slave to one.
The audience can receive the work.
It just shouldn’t create it.
The music should exist before the audience enters the room.
And perhaps that is the test:
Would I still write this if nobody read it?
Would I still say it if nobody applauded?
Would I still create it if nobody knew I had done it?
If the answer is yes, then perhaps the expression remains truly mine.
My one-week experiment didn’t teach me that I don’t want an audience.
Clearly, I do.
It taught me something more uncomfortable:
I may want an audience, but I don’t want to be ruled by one.
I want the freedom to write even if nobody reads.
And perhaps that is the highest form of freedom of expression—not having no audience, but being indifferent to whether there is one.
So yes, I am still off the digital grid.
With three blogs sitting around.
And me itching to publish them.
Which means I am not quite Tansen’s guru yet.
I am a normal Gandhi.
Not Mahatma Gandhi—although, to be fair, even he eventually published a book about his experiments with truth. 😀
- Revised version of the blog Freedom of expression – slave to an audience
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